A bald eagle flew over our house one morning last week before breakfast. It was proceeded by a duck, followed by a black crow. (Shamefully not Chris Robinson.) I was leaning to the window watching the duck when I saw a bigger body yards behind it.
“Something big is coming,” I said.
I thought it was a heron. We had seen a pair of cranes the weekend before, as always in a farm field, but no. A bald eagle for your Thursday viewing pleasure.
“That’s an eagle,” I said. “A bald eagle.”
“I thought I saw one,” Tim said.
“Well, you did,” I said.
The other day, I told my youngest, “We need to take a bath tonight.” They looked me straight in the eye and announced cheerfully, “I hope you forget.”
A curse, an invitation. (I did not forget.)
Speaking of forgetting, it has come to my attention that I have a painful tendency to not finish all my projects after I start them. Some of this is normal. It’s fun to start things! I also love to be suspended in a creative act. I love the potential of a thing: a bedroom, a novel, a garden, or the thought of a whole summer vacation to fill with slow glee.
However, after watching this tendency in action with my children and their million ideas - many never completed - I’m feeling motivated to work on this in myself. Maybe they don’t need to “overcome” this. My attempts to fix this may only benefit myself. Totally fine!
Sometime last week, I caught a snippet of audio (I can’t remember where now - I believe it was Elizabeth Gilbert giving advice in a video. I want to say it was an offering co-hosted with Suleika Jaouad, author of the memoir Between Two Kingdoms and writer of the moving newsletter The Isolation Journals but of course I can’t find it now. Someone send me a fact-checker!) In the advice moment, a person was asking advice about a project they had been working on when they had a pressing idea for another project. They wanted to know: is it okay to switch horses midstream? Pivot to a new thing even if you’re in the middle of another?
The response (again, I think by Elizabeth) was: “That depends. Are you someone with a history of actually finishing things?”
Oh man. Gut punch. I paused the video and never returned but have been thinking about that line A LOT. Something about spring has me tallying inventory, seeing the unfinished projects everywhere. In fact, starting Under a Spell in 2022 right after our move across the state of Michigan meant that nothing had to be perfect. Pure potential. It could be whatever I wanted. Whatever IT wanted. This happens to be my favorite set of conditions. Nothing even needed to be finished. One post a day. Done!
In August, we will have lived in this not permanent, not perfect house for two years. It’s becoming a little uncute to me that an extra mattress still leans against a wall in the basement. To be honest, I’m not entirely resolved about the mattress situation. Some days I care about stuff like that. Other days I’m all **shrug.** My creative life, on the other hand, looks similarly jangly. Scraps and open-mouthed boxes jumble in corners. Garlands from past parties wave raggedly in the wind. (We’re still in metaphor here, there are no actual raggedy garlands but you know what I mean.) There is probably some symmetry ahead, straightening both the real home and the corners of my mind, but I’m feeling most dedicated to tackling the latter right now.
It’s occurring to me as I write about this that there is a tool in the coaching space in which you take a quiz to find out your preferred style of action. The corporation that administers this - The Kolbe Corporation - calls it an index which is, I guess, business speak for quiz. Maybe they don’t want to sound like a magazine that gives quizzes called “What Kind of Lover Are YOU?”
When we learned about this tool in our coaching course, I was like, Oh, great, another Myers-Briggs chart to make my eyes bleed. (It took all my strength not to spell that Meijers-Briggs.) Jokes aside, life has provided me with sufficient evidence that is indeed time for Kara to take a quiz, any quiz, all the quizzes, so she can explore what kind of mind she’s carting around (and maybe stop speaking about herself in the third person).
In the Kolbe model I’m linking to here, which I really do recommend, there are four modes of action in terms of functional performance (anyone’s eyes glazing over yet because of the phrase functional performance?). People tend to rate highest in one of the four, with variations of ability in the others.
Here are the four modes. Maybe you’ll recognize yourself as dominating one of them?
Fact finder - The instinctive need to probe and the way we gather and share information.
Follow Thru - The instinctive need to pattern and the way we organize and design.
Quick Start - The instinctive need to improvise and the way we deal with risk and uncertainty.
Implementor (why do they spell it this way?) - The instinctive need to demonstrate and the way we handle space and tangibles.
Did I just copy and paste this from the Kolbe website? Yes. Do I feel like I don’t even have a baby understanding of all this yet? Also yes. And/but I’m going to explore it to (attempt to) crack the puzzles of my mind and (bonus) potentially help other minds if I learn something useful.
Speaking of copying and pasting, I find this explanation helpful: that the index does not measure “intelligence, personality or social style. It measures the instinctive ways you take action.” But it then adds “when you strive.” I have a hard time encouraging others to strive more in their lives. In general, in the United States we could do with a little less striving. A little more breathing, a little more considering community. A little more relaxing and reaching out to others. (Who asked you, Kara!) However, I think you all know I’m a big fan of instinct. I’m also a huge fan of action.
I joked last week to someone in my life that hammer is my love language.
The first time I came across this index (and the second and third time) I thought: I am all of these modes. There are so many parts of me that show up, I am all of these patterns of action, sometimes all on the same day. (Is it super fun living inside this brain? Yes! **unicorn emoji spraying rainbows**)
Lately I’ve been wanting to look more deeply at how many lenses my mind carries throughout the day. I’ve been prioritizing things I don’t normally prioritize (meditation, cooking, shopping, dishes) as well as taking a more honest look at some ghosts in my creative life. It’s all helping. (Helping what? I suppose my happiness and wholeness.) I also find myself able to dive a little more cohesively into the projects I care about and am finally ready to take this quiz.
Lemme know if anyone cares to know what settings Kara’s magical brain adjusts itself to each night as she dreams, I’ll tuck it into a future post.
Also, I want to share that a hat I’m knitting my youngest is part of what inspired this post. Sometime in February, I stuffed it into a canvas bag to take with me to the library so I could knit while the kids did some programs. (Am I 92? Yes and I love me). When we got home, I hung the bag on a coat rack (a functional one. RIP our old broken one, host of so many jokes which I finally found the strength/sanity to duct tape for one final time before dropping at a donation center to become someone else’s problem/enlightenment).
Did that knitting project remain in that canvas bag on that coat rack for the next two months? (Is it not a knitting project?!) I got it out this week and redoubled my efforts. I’m halfway through the tube-like middle part. When Tim saw it a few nights ago, he asked if I’m knitting a fez.
Every time I think of that joke, stealth, perfect, I start laughing again.
Alright, off I go: quizzes, business cliches, fezzes ahoy. Yours in the deep seas of selfdom,
Kara
P.S. I hiiiiiiiiighy recommend Amelia Morris’s I Speak for the Housewives post, penned in response to an academic’s take on people writing about their kids. Specifically, women writing about their lives as mothers. Do I always link to my friends’ writing? Kind of. But Amelia’s post is so beautifully articulated and carefully explored, I appreciate her taking time to say something I constantly run up against as someone who straddles literary, academic, and strictly defined circles in ways I consistently find uncomfortable.
P.P.S. I read Elizabeth Crane’s memoir This Story Will Change about her husband leaving and it’s written mostly in the third person. I really enjoyed it and it is very sad. It also mentions Kalamazoo a bunch which was trippy. Recommend (the memoir and the town).
Yes to less striving (and perhaps to more allowing and receiving)!!! Geez, was the late coat rack THE coat rack that provided moments of solace at times of turmoil? RIP, indeed. So, it turns out that I am almost equal in three of the four Kolbe styles. Blessing? Curse? Neither? Somehow I made it all the way to the ripe old age of older than I'd like without knowing that about myself. Go figure. Please sign me up for more tells about Kara's brain settings 🤓
Ahh thank you (as always!) for recommending my writing. I really appreciate it!! I also really enjoyed reading about your patterns and questioning of your patterns. We are maybe doing something similar right now... I purposely haven't gone to gymnastics for the last two weeks, curious about the energy I have been bringing to what *should* be just a fun hobby. Hmmmmm... Anyway, your half-knitted hat looks fabulous as do all the dragon drawings. xoxx